Bug Unit

Ok, so we have been away for quite some time now, silence echoing in the blogging halls. But now we are back, with stories aplenty, and surely more to come. Here are a few:

1. The Untold Story Behind Going to France
At a number of different points it looked as though our chances of getting to France were pretty slim, but they didn’t ever look as bleak as they did on the first day. We had phoned the consulate on a whim, one week before we were planning to, simply because we didn’t have anything to do. That is when we discovered that the consulate was booked up a month in advance. We hopped on a bus and hightailed to a travel agent, feeling sure that there must be something that someone could do. The travel agent told us there was no way, that they could only get visas, at the fastest, in about 14 days. Now, everybody knows that all ended well, but this is the untold story…We came out of the travel agency, and all I wanted to do was cry. Tears welled up, and then Kyle and I began to fight the usual fight we fight when I cry, which basically involves him telling me not to cry because it doesn’t achieve anything and it isn’t practical, and me getting even more overwrought and trying to explain that it does achieve something and it is practical because it will make me feel better. Basically, the short story is, we got back to my cousin Neil’s house, and both decided to deal with the disappointment in our own way. Kyle went to do stuff on the computer, and I went and stood in my cousin’s kitchen, and allocated myself ten minutes to cry. So there i was, sobbing, and I began to pray. I prayed that there could be some sort of miracle that would allow us to go. I prayed and prayed, and suddenly I felt better and I felt calm. And only a few minutes later, Kyle spoke to his friend Tam and we discovered a place that could get the visa’s within a day and a half. That day my faith got bolstered.

2.The Untold Story behind the Pain of Snowboarding
People who have ever been snowboarding know not to ask silly questions like ‘Is it fun’? or ‘ Are you good yet’? Like Cousin Neil. Cousin Neil has been snowboarding. The first question he asked us was ‘Painful, hey’? And then the next time he spoke to us he still asked ‘Still painful’? Clearly this is a man who knows stuff about snowboarding. To anyone going snowboarding, be aware that you will not have a butt, or coccyx (Kyle has dealt with this in his blog post as well). You will only have a festering ball of pain where your posterior used to be. You will intensely dislike hills, ski-lifts, snow and the French, in that order. Children who refuse to move out of your way, causing you to crash on your butt so you don’t hit them will remain constant as the single thing that you dislike the most about snowboarding. Orangina and Auntie Maggie’s suggestion to keep some chocolate in your jacket pocket to comfort you will prove to be two things that get you through the days. Sometimes you will fall over five times in a row while trying to get on the ski-lift, and then the nice man in the ski booth will help you, but it will still hurt. You will know that you should stand back and admire the majestic beauty of the mountains, and appreciate the fact that you are in the Pyrenees snowboarding, and sometimes you will manage, but then a little French child will whizz past you again.

3.The Untold Story Of Scotland
Ok, so this one really is an untold story. We are now in Scotland, Edinburgh to be precise. We are staying in a hostel with a dodgy hallway and a circular staircase that has all these wierd drawings on it proclaiming things like ‘This (the stairs) will get you healthy’ and ‘This way tae the top, and this way tae the pub’- so at least they have their priorities straight. It is a cool hostel, which is lucky because we have committed to stay here until the 1st of March, which is when we move into a beautiful flat with an Australian couple called Isje (pronounced Ee-sha) and Jack. The house hunt has been pretty hilarious, and also creepy sometimes. We saw the Aussie flat on our first night in Edinburgh, and at the time, although we could see it was cool, we didn’t fully appreciate how amazing it was. Then we spent a couple of days visiting other places. One of the places was in a snooty area called Duddingston. The flat was a five bedroom triple story luxury townhouse with 42 inch plasma screens on the walls (one in the kitchen and one in the lounge), those hectic windy staircases joining floors, and everything was chic and bleached wood and metal and it was absolutely gorgeous. It was also pretty affordable and the landlady was really nice. It seemed too good to be true…and anybody who is more than two years old knows the rest of that sentence. Basically, there was one man who took us around the house giving the running commentary that went ‘this is the kitchen, the fridges and everything…work. This is the 42 inch plasma screen. It….works. This is the washing machine, I am doing a load of washing right now. I have done a load before and been very satisfied that it works. ‘ Cool, so now we knew that everything….worked. But was there more to this utopia? Well, there was a couple living in the top room who didn’t come downstairs to meet us, and neither of their digsmates had seen their room in the two weeks of living in the house. They pretty much kept to themselves, we were told, and the only way you would know if they were awake was if you tried to change the tv channel, which, it seemed, was verboden. So now we had a house where everything worked and two 42 inch plasma screens which had to be kept on the channel desired by a phantom housemate upstairs. Anything else? Just the following conversational gambit from the Czech housemate who was cooking at the time of our arrival: ‘Well, Hitler wasn’t really such a bad man. He was very clever psycologically and socially. It’s all in the first chapter of Mein Kampf.’ Oh good. Next time I am reading Mein Kampf I am sure we can talk about it.

That was the wierdest house, but other near misses included a 53 year old man who had a great music collection and liked to hang out with people under thirty, and a med student who phoned us every 15 minutes to check that we were still coming. So it was with great relief that we secured our place with two mid twenties professionals who liked a bottle of wine or two, and had a sleeper couch perfect for weary travellers to crash on. And the best part of this house, was that everything also…worked. That’s what I call a bonus!